commerce

• international c. contributes to peace, brotherhood

52:6.31. So­cial fra­ter­nity. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial so­cial con­tacts and fra­ter­nal as­so­ci­a­tions through travel, com­merce, and com­pet­i­tive play. De­vel­op­ment of a com­mon lan­guage and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mul­ti­lin­guists. The racial and na­tional in­ter­change of stu­dents, teach­ers, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and re­li­gious philoso­phers.

• trade, manufacturing, and banking taught by Prince’s staff

66:5.115. The com­mis­sion on in­dus­try and trade. This coun­cil was em­ployed in fos­ter­ing in­dus­try within the tribes and in pro­mot­ing trade be­tween the var­i­ous peace groups. Its leader was Nod. Ev­ery form of prim­i­tive man­u­fac­ture was en­cour­aged by this corps. They con­tributed di­rectly to the el­e­va­tion of stan­dards of liv­ing by pro­vid­ing many new com­modi­ties to at­tract the fancy of prim­i­tive men. They greatly ex­panded the trade in the im­proved salt pro­duced by the coun­cil on sci­ence and art.

66:5.12It was among these en­light­ened groups ed­u­cated in the Dala­ma­tia schools that the first com­mer­cial credit was prac­ticed. From a cen­tral ex­change of cred­its they se­cured to­kens which were ac­cepted in lieu of the ac­tual ob­jects of barter. The world did not im­prove upon these busi­ness meth­ods for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years.

• women were first traders

69:3.11The early traders were women; they were em­ployed as spies, car­ry­ing on com­merce as a side line. Pres­ently trade ex­panded, the women act­ing as in­ter­me­di­aries—job­bers. Then came the mer­chant class, charg­ing a com­mis­sion, profit, for their ser­vices. Growth of group barter de­vel­oped into com­merce; and fol­low­ing the ex­change of com­modi­ties came the ex­change of skilled la­bor.

• barter followed seizure by raids

69:4.1Just as mar­riage by con­tract fol­lowed mar­riage by cap­ture, so trade by barter fol­lowed seizure by raids. But a long pe­riod of piracy in­ter­vened be­tween the early prac­tices of silent barter and the later trade by mod­ern ex­change meth­ods.

69:4.2The first barter was con­ducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on a neu­tral spot. Women held the first mar­kets; they were the ear­li­est traders, and this was be­cause they were the bur­den bear­ers; the men were war­riors. Very early the trad­ing counter was de­vel­oped, a wall wide enough to pre­vent the traders reach­ing each other with weapons.

69:4.3A fe­tish was used to stand guard over the de­posits of goods for silent barter. Such mar­ket places were se­cure against theft; noth­ing would be re­moved ex­cept by barter or pur­chase; with a fe­tish on guard the goods were al­ways safe. The early traders were scrupu­lously hon­est within their own tribes but re­garded it as all right to cheat dis­tant strangers. Even the early He­brews rec­og­nized a sep­a­rate code of ethics in their deal­ings with the gen­tiles.

69:4.4For ages silent barter con­tin­ued be­fore men would meet, un­armed, on the sa­cred mar­ket place. These same mar­ket squares be­came the first places of sanc­tu­ary and in some coun­tries were later known as “cities of refuge.” Any fugi­tive reach­ing the mar­ket place was safe and se­cure against at­tack.

69:4.5The first weights were grains of wheat and other ce­re­als. The first medium of ex­change was a fish or a goat. Later the cow be­came a unit of barter.

69:4.6Mod­ern writ­ing orig­i­nated in the early trade rec­ords; the first lit­er­a­ture of man was a trade-pro­mo­tion doc­u­ment, a salt ad­ver­tise­ment. Many of the ear­lier wars were fought over nat­u­ral de­posits, such as flint, salt, and met­als. The first for­mal tribal treaty con­cerned the in­ter­trib­al­iz­ing of a salt de­posit. These treaty spots af­forded op­por­tu­nity for friendly and peace­ful in­ter­change of ideas and the in­ter­min­gling of var­i­ous tribes.

69:4.7Writ­ing pro­gressed up through the stages of the “mes­sage stick,” knot­ted cords, pic­ture writ­ing, hi­ero­glyph­ics, and wampum belts, to the early sym­bolic al­pha­bets. Mes­sage send­ing evolved from the prim­i­tive smoke sig­nal up through run­ners, an­i­mal rid­ers, rail­roads, and air­planes, as well as tele­graph, tele­phone, and wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

• led to exploration and discovery
• most potent influence in spread of civilization

69:4.8New ideas and bet­ter meth­ods were car­ried around the in­hab­ited world by the an­cient traders. Com­merce, linked with ad­ven­ture, led to ex­plo­ration and dis­cov­ery. And all of these gave birth to trans­porta­tion. Com­merce has been the great civ­i­lizer through pro­mot­ing the cross-fer­til­iza­tion of cul­ture.

• first trading was woman exchange

69:5.107. Sex urge—the de­sire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trad­ing was woman ex­change; it long pre­ceded horse trad­ing. But never did the barter in sex slaves ad­vance so­ci­ety; such traf­fic was and is a racial dis­grace, for at one and the same time it hin­dered the de­vel­op­ment of fam­ily life and pol­luted the bi­o­logic fit­ness of su­pe­rior peo­ples.

• international c. contributes to peace, brotherhood

70:3.4The peace of Uran­tia will be pro­moted far more by in­ter­na­tional trade or­ga­ni­za­tions than by all the sen­ti­men­tal soph­istry of vi­sion­ary peace plan­ning. Trade re­la­tions have been fa­cil­i­tated by de­vel­op­ment of lan­guage and by im­proved meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as by bet­ter trans­porta­tion.

• appeared ca. 8000 B.C. with appearance of traders

79:1.3By 8000 B.C. the slowly in­creas­ing arid­ity of the high­land re­gions of cen­tral Asia be­gan to drive the And­ites to the river bot­toms and the seashores. This in­creas­ing drought not only drove them to the val­leys of the Nile, Eu­phrates, In­dus, and Yel­low rivers, but it pro­duced a new de­vel­op­ment in And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. A new class of men, the traders, be­gan to ap­pear in large num­bers.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

• maritime trade of India, Sumeria among earliest

79:3.6The Dra­vid­ian cen­ters of cul­ture were lo­cated in the river val­leys, prin­ci­pally of the In­dus and Ganges, and in the Dec­can along the three great rivers flow­ing through the East­ern Ghats to the sea. The set­tle­ments along the sea­coast of the West­ern Ghats owed their promi­nence to mar­itime re­la­tion­ships with Sume­ria.

79:3.7The Dra­vid­i­ans were among the ear­li­est peo­ples to build cities and to en­gage in an ex­ten­sive ex­port and im­port busi­ness, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were mak­ing reg­u­lar trips to dis­tant Mes­o­po­ta­mia; Dra­vid­ian ship­ping was push­ing coast­wise across the Ara­bian Sea to the Sume­rian cities of the Per­sian Gulf and was ven­tur­ing on the wa­ters of the Bay of Ben­gal as far as the East In­dies. An al­pha­bet, to­gether with the art of writ­ing, was im­ported from Sume­ria by these sea­far­ers and mer­chants.

• most potent influence in spread of civilization

79:3.8These com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships greatly con­tributed to the fur­ther di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of a cos­mopoli­tan cul­ture, re­sult­ing in the early ap­pear­ance of many of the re­fine­ments and even lux­u­ries of ur­ban life. When the later ap­pear­ing Aryans en­tered In­dia, they did not rec­og­nize in the Dra­vid­i­ans their And­ite cousins sub­merged in the San­gik races, but they did find a well-ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion. De­spite bi­o­logic lim­i­ta­tions, the Dra­vid­i­ans founded a su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion. It was well dif­fused through­out all In­dia and has sur­vived on down to mod­ern times in the Dec­can.

• between China and Mesopotamia

79:7.6The sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween cer­tain of the early Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mian meth­ods of time reck­on­ing, as­tron­omy, and gov­ern­men­tal ad­min­is­tra­tion were due to the com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships be­tween these two re­motely sit­u­ated cen­ters. Chi­nese mer­chants trav­eled the over­land routes through Tur­kes­tan to Mes­o­po­ta­mia even in the days of the Sume­ri­ans. Nor was this ex­change one-sided—the val­ley of the Eu­phrates ben­e­fited con­sid­er­ably thereby, as did the peo­ples of the Gangetic plain. But the cli­matic changes and the no­madic in­va­sions of the third mil­len­nium be­fore Christ greatly re­duced the vol­ume of trade pass­ing over the car­a­van trails of cen­tral Asia.

• early maritime commerce on Mediterranean

80:1.1Be­fore the last And­ites were driven out of the Eu­phrates val­ley, many of their breth­ren had en­tered Eu­rope as ad­ven­tur­ers, teach­ers, traders, and war­riors. Dur­ing the ear­lier days of the vi­o­let race the Med­i­ter­ra­nean trough was pro­tected by the Gibral­tar isth­mus and the Si­cil­ian land bridge. Some of man’s very early mar­itime com­merce was es­tab­lished on these in­land lakes, where blue men from the north and the Sa­ha­rans from the south met Nod­ites and Adamites from the east.

• early Nordics traded in amber

80:9.4The Nordics con­tin­ued the trade in am­ber from the Baltic coast, build­ing up a great com­merce with the broad­heads of the Danube val­ley via the Bren­ner Pass. This ex­tended con­tact with the Danu­bians led these north­ern­ers into mother wor­ship, and for sev­eral thou­sands of years cre­ma­tion of the dead was al­most uni­ver­sal through­out Scan­di­navia. This ex­plains why re­mains of the ear­lier white races, al­though buried all over Eu­rope, are not to be found—only their ashes in stone and clay urns. These white men also built dwellings; they never lived in caves. And again this ex­plains why there are so few ev­i­dences of the white man’s early cul­ture, al­though the pre­ced­ing Cro-Magnon type is well pre­served where it has been se­curely sealed up in caves and grot­toes. As it were, one day in north­ern Eu­rope there is a prim­i­tive cul­ture of the ret­ro­gress­ing Danu­bians and the blue man and the next that of a sud­denly ap­pear­ing and vastly su­pe­rior white man.

• active in Mediterranean in 2500 B.C.

80:9.9The Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast­lands did not, how­ever, be­come per­me­ated by the And­ites un­til the times of the great no­madic in­va­sions of 2500 B.C. Land traf­fic and trade were nearly sus­pended dur­ing these cen­turies when the no­mads in­vaded the east­ern Med­i­ter­ra­nean dis­tricts. This in­ter­fer­ence with land travel brought about the great ex­pan­sion of sea traf­fic and trade; Med­i­ter­ra­nean sea-borne com­merce was in full swing about forty-five hun­dred years ago. And this de­vel­op­ment of ma­rine traf­fic re­sulted in the sud­den ex­pan­sion of the de­scen­dants of the And­ites through­out the en­tire coastal ter­ri­tory of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin.

81:3.1The cli­matic de­struc­tion of the rich, open grass­land hunt­ing and graz­ing grounds of Tur­kes­tan, be­gin­ning about 12,000 B.C., com­pelled the men of those re­gions to re­sort to new forms of in­dus­try and crude man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some turned to the cul­ti­va­tion of do­mes­ti­cated flocks, oth­ers be­came agri­cul­tur­ists or col­lec­tors of wa­ter-borne food, but the higher type of And­ite in­tel­lects chose to en­gage in trade and man­u­fac­ture. It even be­came the cus­tom for en­tire tribes to ded­i­cate them­selves to the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle in­dus­try. From the val­ley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yel­low River, the chief busi­ness of the su­pe­rior tribes be­came the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, with com­merce as a side line.

81:3.2The in­crease in trade and in the man­u­fac­ture of raw ma­te­ri­als into var­i­ous ar­ti­cles of com­merce was di­rectly in­stru­men­tal in pro­duc­ing those early and semi­peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties which were so in­flu­en­tial in spread­ing the cul­ture and the arts of civ­i­liza­tion. Be­fore the era of ex­ten­sive world trade, so­cial com­mu­ni­ties were tribal—ex­panded fam­ily groups. Trade brought into fel­low­ship dif­fer­ent sorts of hu­man be­ings, thus con­tribut­ing to a more speedy cross-fer­til­iza­tion of cul­ture.

81:3.3About twelve thou­sand years ago the era of the in­de­pen­dent cities was dawn­ing. And these prim­i­tive trad­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing cities were al­ways sur­rounded by zones of agri­cul­ture and cat­tle rais­ing. While it is true that in­dus­try was pro­moted by the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dards of liv­ing, you should have no mis­con­cep­tion re­gard­ing the re­fine­ments of early ur­ban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the av­er­age prim­i­tive com­mu­nity rose from one to two feet ev­ery twenty-five years as the re­sult of the mere ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dirt and trash. Cer­tain of these olden cities also rose above the sur­round­ing ground very quickly be­cause their un­baked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the cus­tom to build new dwellings di­rectly on top of the ru­ins of the old.

81:3.4The wide­spread use of met­als was a fea­ture of this era of the early in­dus­trial and trad­ing cities. You have al­ready found a bronze cul­ture in Tur­kes­tan dat­ing be­fore 9000 B.C., and the And­ites early learned to work in iron, gold, and cop­per, as well. But con­di­tions were very dif­fer­ent away from the more ad­vanced cen­ters of civ­i­liza­tion. There were no dis­tinct pe­ri­ods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three ex­isted at the same time in dif­fer­ent lo­cal­i­ties.

81:3.5Gold was the first metal to be sought by man; it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an or­na­ment. Cop­per was next em­ployed but not ex­ten­sively un­til it was ad­mixed with tin to make the harder bronze. The dis­cov­ery of mix­ing cop­per and tin to make bronze was made by one of the Ad­am­son­ites of Tur­kes­tan whose high­land cop­per mine hap­pened to be lo­cated along­side a tin de­posit.

81:3.6With the ap­pear­ance of crude man­u­fac­ture and be­gin­ning in­dus­try, com­merce quickly be­came the most po­tent in­flu­ence in the spread of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion. The open­ing up of the trade chan­nels by land and by sea greatly fa­cil­i­tated travel and the mix­ing of cul­tures as well as the blend­ing of civ­i­liza­tions. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in gen­eral use through­out civ­i­lized and semi­civ­i­lized lands. These later races not only had the do­mes­ti­cated horse but also var­i­ous sorts of wag­ons and char­i­ots. Ages be­fore, the wheel had been used, but now ve­hi­cles so equipped be­came uni­ver­sally em­ployed both in com­merce and war.

81:3.7The trav­el­ing trader and the rov­ing ex­plorer did more to ad­vance his­toric civ­i­liza­tion than all other in­flu­ences com­bined. Mil­i­tary con­quests, col­o­niza­tion, and mis­sion­ary en­ter­prises fos­tered by the later re­li­gions were also fac­tors in the spread of cul­ture; but these were all sec­ondary to the trad­ing re­la­tions, which were ever ac­cel­er­ated by the rapidly de­vel­op­ing arts and sci­ences of in­dus­try.

81:3.8In­fu­sion of the Adamic stock into the hu­man races not only quick­ened the pace of civ­i­liza­tion, but it also greatly stim­u­lated their pro­cliv­i­ties to­ward ad­ven­ture and ex­plo­ration to the end that most of Eura­sia and north­ern Africa was pres­ently oc­cu­pied by the rapidly mul­ti­ply­ing mixed de­scen­dants of the And­ites.

• international c. contributes to peace, brotherhood

81:6.19While very lit­tle prog­ress has been made on Uran­tia to­ward de­vel­op­ing an in­ter­na­tional lan­guage, much has been ac­com­plished by the es­tab­lish­ment of in­ter­na­tional com­mer­cial ex­change. And all these in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions should be fos­tered, whether they in­volve lan­guage, trade, art, sci­ence, com­pet­i­tive play, or re­li­gion.

• Jesus’ advice to rich man on wealth derived from

132:5.5“3. Trade wealth—riches ob­tained as a fair profit in the ex­change and barter of ma­te­rial goods.

• Jesus’ advice to rich man on wealth derived from

132:5.17“3. As long as men choose to con­duct the world’s busi­ness by trade and barter, they are en­ti­tled to a fair and le­git­i­mate profit. Ev­ery trades­man de­serves wages for his ser­vices; the mer­chant is en­ti­tled to his hire. The fair­ness of trade and the hon­est treat­ment ac­corded one’s fel­lows in the or­ga­nized busi­ness of the world cre­ate many dif­fer­ent sorts of profit wealth, and all these sources of wealth must be judged by the high­est prin­ci­ples of jus­tice, hon­esty, and fair­ness. The hon­est trader should not hes­i­tate to take the same profit which he would gladly ac­cord his fel­low trader in a sim­i­lar trans­ac­tion. While this sort of wealth is not iden­ti­cal with in­di­vid­u­ally earned in­come when busi­ness deal­ings are con­ducted on a large scale, at the same time, such hon­estly ac­cu­mu­lated wealth en­dows its pos­ses­sor with a con­sid­er­able eq­uity as re­gards a voice in its sub­se­quent dis­tri­bu­tion.

• Jesus never meddled with others’ temporal business

165:4.1As the apos­tles bap­tized be­liev­ers, the Mas­ter talked with those who tar­ried. And a cer­tain young man said to him: “Mas­ter, my fa­ther died leav­ing much prop­erty to me and my brother, but my brother re­fuses to give me that which is my own. Will you, then, bid my brother di­vide this in­her­i­tance with me?” Je­sus was mildly in­dig­nant that this ma­te­rial-minded youth should bring up for dis­cus­sion such a ques­tion of busi­ness; but he pro­ceeded to use the oc­ca­sion for the im­par­ta­tion of fur­ther in­struc­tion. Said Je­sus: “Man, who made me a di­vider over you? Where did you get the idea that I give at­ten­tion to the ma­te­rial af­fairs of this world?” And then, turn­ing to all who were about him, he said: “Take heed and keep your­selves free from cov­etous­ness; a man’s life con­sists not in the abun­dance of the things which he may pos­sess. Hap­pi­ness comes not from the power of wealth, and joy springs not from riches. Wealth, in it­self, is not a curse, but the love of riches many times leads to such de­vo­tion to the things of this world that the soul be­comes blinded to the beau­ti­ful at­trac­tions of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of God on earth and to the joys of eter­nal life in heaven.

• Jesus never meddled with others’ temporal business

165:4.4Je­sus thus dealt with the young man and his in­her­i­tance be­cause he knew that his trou­ble was cov­etous­ness. Even if this had not been the case, the Mas­ter would not have in­ter­fered, for he never med­dled with the tem­po­ral af­fairs of even his apos­tles, much less his dis­ci­ples.